Received from NetGalley for review.
POPSUGAR Reading Challenge: prompt #39, a book involving a bookstore/library.
“You’ll just have to get over it. You want to hide. You want to be miserable, but that’s not happening. You’re taking to job at Howling Books. You’re not spending even one day lying on your bed staring at the ceiling.” She looks over at me and then back to the road. “You have to start living again sometime.”
I am in love with this book. IN LOVE. It is beautiful and heartfelt and terribly sad and frustrating and hopeful. It is about life and death and love and the power of words, the magic of writing. It is possibly one of the most important books I will ever read, just because of the way it’s made me feel. My heart is full, I am crying, it is wonderful, and any hopes for a coherent review have gone out the window. Crowley has done such an amazing job of portraying the realities of loss and grief, and the effect it can have on how a person deals with the rest of the world, how it can impact on both your mental and physical well-being, without creating a story that is overly sad. As with most things, time heals and tomorrow is usually better.
‘The memories are in the words. And from that the strange thought comes that my memories are trapped in all the copies of this poem, and so everyone who’s reading it, no matter what copy, has my memories without knowing it.’
Although on the surface it could be considered a love story, there are so many depths within it. The story is really about loss and grief, and how we can pull ourselves back together when everything feels like it’s falling apart. At the beginning of the novel Rachel is depressed and listless – her brother, Cal, has drowned, and she just doesn’t know how to get through life anymore. She can’t face the sea she used to love so much, she can’t face being somewhere Cal has died, so moves back to the city. The city, however, is not without challenges, as Rachel faces her best friend, Henry, who she hasn’t seen for three years. They both think the other forgot about them and didn’t care enough to keep in contact. The love story picks up here, full of anger and miscommunication, and Crowley handles it so well alongside the feelings of grief and how difficult it can be to cope with, and not only in terms of losing a loved one.
“Words matter, in fact. They’re not pointless, as you’ve suggested. If they were pointless, then they couldn’t start revolutions and they wouldn’t change history. If they were just words, we wouldn’t write songs or listen to them. We wouldn’t beg to be read to as kids. If they were just words, then stories wouldn’t have been around since before we could write.”
I really can’t praise this book enough; it is outstanding in every way. The characters are complex and realistic – I didn’t always like Rachel and Henry, but I understood them and why they acted they way they did, and I always loved them. I was so invested in every single character in this novel (yes, I am including Howling Books as a character) and I enjoyed every single minute I spent reading it. Do yourself a favour: buy this book, devour it, love it.
Read: April 12th-15th 2018
5/5 stars
Magic, Ink, and Stardust 